Our Present Duty

There is, in this morning’s Gospel, a truly terrifying moment. Jesus and his disciples cross over to Gentile country, and the second that Jesus’ sandaled foot hits the ground, he is accosted by a mad man, naked and filthy, with matted hair and wild eyes and skin that carries the stench of death from having lain so long among the tombs. He is wiry as a wolf but his body hums with an uncontrollable strength. He has smashed his shackles and bolted past his guard and now stands with his body pointed at Jesus like an arrow drawn back deep into the bowstring – muscles coiled, mind galloping, the whole of him out of control and threatening.

But this is not the terrifying moment.

When Jesus commands the man’s unclean spirit to be gone, the wild man collapses at Jesus’ feet and screams into his face, What have you to do with me? Jesus asks the demon his name, and the answer drops into the conversation like a boulder – I am Legion. I am not one but many, not many but thousands. I am evil with so many faces you will have a hard time keeping track of me, evil that can stare you in the face while also jumping out at you from over your shoulder. I am evil of such magnitude that I can overwhelm and subsume your entire being, leaving you with no name but mine. I am Legion.

But this is not the terrifying moment.

Jesus, unafraid, continues his conversation with the demons. They seem to realize that they have met their match and beg him not to cast him into the abyss where all things evil are dissolved of their power. Send us into those pigs, they cry – unclean, sure, but better than a watery grave. Jesus complies, and the demons surge out of the man’s body into the herd. The swine go mad. They tear down the hillside, ripping through any part of the crowd that stands in their way. They tumble down to the lake in a mob, and when they reach the shoreline, they just keep running – into the water, tumbling over each other, splashing and flailing and crying out until finally they are gone and the water is still and the air is silent.

But even this is not the terrifying moment.

The terrifying moment comes next. When the limp man is lifted from the ground, carried under the shade of a tree, washed, comforted, and dressed, and when the swineherds bring crowds from the town to see what has happened, and when those crowds see the wild man sitting peacefully at the feet of his teacher, clothed and in his right mind, the people find themselves terrifically afraid. They turn to Jesus, this man who had just faced down an army of darkness and cast it into the sea, and they ask him to please, please, just go away. And so Jesus gets into the boat and leaves. He just leaves.

And that is terrifying.   

It’s terrifying because Jesus lets them make the wrong decision. He knows that they are afraid, he knows that they’re acting blindly and stupidly, he knows that he has more good to offer them than they could ever desire or imagine, and yet he leaves them. He sees them reject him, and he allows himself to be rejected. He gets in his boat, and he leaves. He doesn’t stand and argue with them about why they’re being ridiculous. He doesn’t cajole them with parables or prayers. He doesn’t wow them with another miracle to prove he has their best interest at heart. He just leaves, leaves a hole where there could have been healing, a void of hopelessness that evil will be only too happy to fill up once again. He walks away, leaving them with a herd of dead pigs bloating in the lake and a swarm of fear in their hearts. They say no, and he says okay. And that’s terrifying.

It’s terrifying, and it happens in our world all the time. We reject Christ, and Christ allows himself to be rejected. We choose evil, and Christ allows us to choose it. Who knows why we do it. We choose evil because it’s familiar (better the Legion we know than the Savior we don’t). We choose it because it’s easy, or because we are so afraid of change that we’d rather die than try something new. We choose evil for any of a multitude of reasons, and Christ lets us choose it. Look around. We live in a world that is flooded with evil – evil choices, evil people, evil words, evil laws – because Christ allows us to reject him, because, if we want to, Christ will let us swim in the darkest possible waters of fear and death. And that is scary as hell.

It’s also necessary. Because Jesus will not force our choices, force our love, for love that is forced is not love. Jesus does not want our fealty out of fear. Jesus does not want to entertain us into following him or bribe us to choose him. Jesus wants more than half-hearted, wrong-hearted, or closed-hearted disciples. Jesus wants us to choose him for no less a reason than that we have realized that to truly live, we have no other choice. Jesus wants us to love him because we love him. He will always be ready to receive us – the prophet Isaiah tells us that God is always ready to be found, crying out “Here I am!” and holding out his hands for us all the day long – but he will not grab us and force us to come to him any more than we would force a flower to turn its face to the sun.

Now that may sound a little bleak, but let me tell you, there is good news here. First, it’s important to remember that Jesus is just the tiniest bit of a cheat. Because when by him all things were made, the eternal Word of God planted the seeds of love deep within our being. God made us to love. Loving one another and God feels right, feels like home, because our hearts were created with an infinite capacity to love and the eternal longing to do so. And so Jesus knows that there is no need to force our hearts; they are already his.

But there is more good news for us here. Because you’ll remember that in the Gospel, when Jesus gets into his boat and leaves the crowd, he does not leave them alone. He leaves them in the hands of the very man he had just healed; he leaves this man, washed and healed and saved, to stand before the people and continually proclaim the good news. Return to your home, Jesus tells him, and declare how much God has done for you. And that is exactly what the man does – he goes back into the city and tells everyone he sees that he has been healed, that God is here, that God is love, that God is good, that God is making all things new. Choose God, he tells the people. Turn your hearts back to him and find your home. Love the one who made you, he cries, because the one who made you made you to love him.

Jesus gives this man back to his people – just as Jesus gives us to our world. This man’s work is our work too; to proclaim – to shout out! – the good news. This is what you and I have got to do. We have been washed and healed and saved by the merits of our baptism, and each time we come into this church, each time we hold out our hands for holy bread, Jesus then sends us away saying, Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you. Preach the Gospel.

We live in a world where evil is legion, where evil has so many names and faces that it is hard for us to keep track of them. Evil is hate speech, evil is prejudice and fear, evil is bigotry spoken into microphones, evil is bullets fired into bodies at a nightclub, evil is apathy in the face of stupid, senseless tragedy. Evil is legion. But this is not a terrifying moment. Because you and I stand together in the world as the body of Christ. You and I are the baptized, who bring the very light of Christ into the world. You and I and all the whole Church can face down this evil without fear, because we know that in the presence of Christ, even Legion has no power. We are baptized! We have a voice to preach the Gospel, and we must use it. For if we did, if we all preached the good news of Christ crucified in word and action, we would send the voices of evil screaming into the abyss.

This is our solemn and holy task. To quote the old speech by Bishop Frank Weston, this is our present duty. We have got our baptisms, we have got our Mass. We have got our prayer and our service and our outreach. Now go out into the world and preach the Gospel. In the face of hatred, preach love. In the face of intolerance, preach mercy. In the face of despair, preach hope. Preach peace, preach peace, preach peace. And the God of peace, who made you and saved you and marked you as his own, will be with you.

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

19 June 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

A Sinful Woman Forgiven

What happens when you invite Jesus to come under your roof? The answer is, not always what you might expect. That, at least, was the experience of the Pharisee who invited Jesus to eat with him.

I want to talk about that encounter in a moment, but first let me begin by observing that throughout most of his earthly ministry Jesus had no home to speak of, which partly explains why there are so many stories of him in the homes of other people. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58) It’s easy for us to forget that Jesus had to rely on the hospitality of others for basic things like food and shelter. What better way for the faithful to give as well as to receive? God’s coming among us was to be a two-way street: while Jesus taught and healed he needed hospitality and wherever he stayed he was usually, but not always, an honored guest.

Inviting Jesus to come under your roof was no guarantee of a quiet and peaceful evening. At the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus at Bethany, Jesus argued with Judas about money. In another home where Jesus stayed, the roof of the home literally came off, so that a paralysed man could be lowered into the same room as Jesus. In today’s gospel, Jesus dines with a Pharisee, and in the course of the meal conveys some uncomfortable home truths to his host.

Exercising hospitality is one of the ways we please God. Remember how the Lord appeared mysteriously as three men to Abraham and Sarah in the desert, and how Abraham gave them water, washed their feet and gave them shade under the oaks of Mamre? Sarah baked them some bread, and Abraham ordered a calf, “tender and good”, to be cooked and served to the strangers. Abraham was unstinting in his hospitality to the Lord. Remember too what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews states: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)

Showing hospitality is, or at least should be, integral to our lives as people of God. And like all things that matter, it is important that we get it right. I don’t think the Pharisee in today’s gospel got it right - he got part of it right, but left out some essential aspects of hospitality which exposed him to God’s anger, as expressed through Jesus. Let’s revisit the scene once more.

A Pharisee has asked Jesus to eat with him. There are few instances recorded in the gospels of Jesus eating with Pharisees. At a banquet such as the one to which Jesus is invited the guests left their sandals at the door and reclined on low couches with their feet behind them. We can assume that the Pharisee who invited Jesus respected Jesus to some degree and indeed at one point he refers to Jesus as “Teacher” or Rabbi. Nothing seems amiss until a third party - a woman whom the Pharisee describes as a “sinner” - enters the room. In ancient homes there was more public access than in modern ones, so the woman could simply have wandered in from outside. When she comes into the room she brings an unexpected emotional charge, for as soon as she sees Jesus, even before she utters a word or does anything, she is in tears.

Her tears remind me of a midday Mass I attended many years ago at St Peter’s, Eaton Square in London. There were no more than five people in the congregation. One man, whom I had not seen at Mass before, approached the altar at the giving of communion with tears in his eyes. As he held out his hand to receive the sacrament, his tears flowed ever more freely. Instead of saying “Amen” he said “Thank you” - I doubt I have ever heard those two words said with such gratitude or feeling. Because of him, I began to cry as well. Jesus was present under our roof and our emotions and feelings were being stirred at a deep level.

The woman in Jesus’ story has her sins forgiven: a generous act because her sins were many. Jesus tells her, “your faith has saved you.” It is important to note here that it was her faith, not her love, that saved her. Her love flows towards the man who does not condemn her, but who sees her faith and trust in God. And how beautifully she expresses that love, by kneeling down and washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and hair, and then anointing his feet with ointment.

Contrast her action to what the Pharisee does, or doesn’t do. Although he has provided Jesus with a meal, in other ways he is less than generous. Jesus judges him next to the woman, whom the Pharisee regarded as unclean; yet by Jesus’ reckoning it is the woman who is justified while it is the Pharisee who has fallen short. Jesus tells him:

“I entered your house [and] you gave me no water for my feet...You gave me no kiss...You did not anoint my head with oil.”

By contrast, Jesus says to the woman: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” Yet God’s peace was not reserved solely for the woman - it was available to the Pharisee as well, but his half-hearted attempt at hospitality has denied him access to that peace. We can guess what was going through his mind; perhaps he was afraid of what the other Pharisees might think, by inviting this radical preacher and teacher into his house. He receives Jesus with formal politeness but no great warmth, refusing the small gestures of hospitality which make all the difference between a proper welcome and a perfunctory one. In effect he wishes to assert some misguided sense of superiority over his guest, but it only exposes him as a poor host, caring more about himself and about what others may think of him. It is the Pharisee, the so-called man of God, who is revealed to be deficient in the spirit of God. The woman, despite or perhaps because of her sinfulness, throws herself on the mercy of God who forgives her her sin.

This is a story about the risks you take in inviting Jesus to come under your roof. At some point in our faith journeys, we must all make this invitation. “Jesus, I want you to come into my life.” But what would happen if he did? That’s impossible to predict, and so it is a risky venture. Do you have a list of demands ready for him? My advice would be to tear them up and throw them away. Jesus knows what you need better than you know yourself. Do you wonder that Jesus would be interested in someone as unimportant as you? Jesus always honors and responds to those who call upon him.

When Jesus comes into your life there is every possibility of your life changing. If nothing changes, then your welcome is not whole hearted enough, as the Pharisee learned the hard way. Be wholehearted in your invitation, and trust God to do the right thing for you. If evidence were needed of the power of Jesus to change lives, we see it in the example of the woman whose gratitude overflowed in tears of love in response to God’s mercy. And for good measure, at the end of our reading, there is a roll call of women whose lives were cured by Jesus, and who in turn gave their lives and resources to support the mission of the church.

So practice the hospitality of a true believer. Invite Jesus in, treat him as an honored guest, and ask him for nothing more than mercy. For we are all sinners, and all have need of his healing and forgiving love.

Preached by Father David Beresford

12 June 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Spread the Word

Elijah is a great, old-school, brand-name prophet. His raising of the son of the Widow of Zarephath is one of the really compelling biblical stories. There he is in the upper room, mysteriously battling with God and death to revive the boy. He stretches out upon the corpse—imagine!--and cries out to God. He asks God the big questions: Why did you do this? Why would you bring tragedy upon a house to which you have specifically sent me?

And God certainly did send him, in true prophetic style. Elijah had been living in a ravine and was being fed by ravens, and when the water in that area dried up (as a result of his own prophetic declaration), God told him to go to Zarephath because there was a woman in that town who would feed him.

Ever the obedient servant, Elijah arrives in that town to find that the widow in question is in such dire distress that she has almost nothing to give him. “I am just gathering sticks,” she says, “to take home so I can cook the small amount of food we have left, and feed it to my son before we die.” It’s a mark of Elijah’s vast confidence in God that he can tell her not to be afraid, to give him some part of what she has, for her jar of flour and her jug of oil will never run out. And Elijah’s astonishing prophetic word is true. Elijah is a great prophet.

So when the woman’s son then dies later of an unrelated illness, Elijah is truly put to the test as a prophet. The widow confronts him directly: “What do you have against me, man of God?” And Elijah too confronts God: “Why have you brought tragedy even on this widow with whom I am staying?” His revival of the widow’s son is mysterious and dramatic. He carries the boy upstairs and puts him on his own bed and stretches out on top of him three times, and the boy comes back to life. And the woman sees that he is a man of God and his word it true.

Who doesn’t want to be like Elijah? He is larger than life, epic, legendary. This story is so powerful that Elijah’s protégé, the prophet Elisha, also enacts a version of it, raising a woman’s son from the dead by stretching himself out on top of the body three times. That mysterious gesture, so powerful and visceral, lets us know that these are no ordinary holy men.

By comparison, Jesus’s version of this story is almost understated. He sees the widow of Nain, is moved with compassion for her, touches the funeral bier, and brings her son back to life. I don’t mean to downplay our Lord’s revival of the widow’s son, but this story, which only Luke tells, doesn’t have the wealth of detail and drama that even John’s story about raising Lazarus gives us. There aren’t really any pyrotechnics. It’s just a touching story. Literally a touching story. Jesus is touched by the woman’s suffering and he touches back, stretching his hand out to make contact with her loss. It’s impressive but it’s very simple.

There is one other difference between the story of Jesus and the stories of Elijah and Elisha. Did you notice it? Jesus is surrounded by a crowd. In fact, there is an interesting clash of crowds in this story. Jesus and his disciples and a great crowd of people come to the entrance of the town and they are met by the widow and the body of her son and a crowd of mourners in a funeral procession. And what happens in that crowd feels subtle but it’s really important.

Some of the people there that day think they are part of a funeral, some think they are following a prophet, but nobody is prepared for what actually happens. Nobody is quite ready for new life. We hear that fear seizes all of them and they are amazed by Jesus. And they spread the word “throughout Judea and all of the surrounding country.” Even the son who is raised from the dead sits up and begins talking. It’s what happens in that crowd that grabs my imagination this morning.

You see, I’ve been worrying about crowds lately. I’ve been worrying about what happens when we gather together at, say, political rallies. I’ve been worrying about how crowds clash with one another, worrying about what our political conventions are going to be like in Cleveland and here in Philadelphia this summer. I’ve been looking at crowds and wondering where they are going. Looking and wondering about whether we can hold together as a group. We’ve been feeling the power of crowds a lot, and it hasn’t been good.

And I’m grateful that in this story from Luke there is more than just a compelling performance by a lone prophetic figure. I’m grateful that Jesus is doing more than establishing himself as a holy man. I’m grateful beyond words that in Jesus God is touching us, individually and in groups. And I’m humbled by the sense of a call that comes with this story of new life.

Those crowds outside the town of Nain had come for sharply different reasons. Some thought they were at a funeral and some thought they were following a holy man, but none of them were prepared to be so radically changed by what they saw that day. Nobody knew that at the end of that day they would themselves be evangelists. But they were. They spread that story all around the surrounding country. That story spread to you and me, and it still has the power to catch us up and change us and call us to witness.

How many of us are willing to spread the word that there is a kingdom of heaven forming here on earth, and that in that kingdom it’s possible to know peace and forgiveness and new life? How many of us are prepared to live in the truth of the Resurrection? How many of us are willing to admit that in Christ, even in times like these, it’s still possible to come together and be changed by the touch of God? That it’s possible to reach out and be moved by compassion instead of being deadlocked and polarized and fearful and obsessed with our divisions? How many of us are really ready to see death replaced by life?

Do you want that? Do you really want it with your whole being? Because right now is a really good time for us to be putting the focus on the witness we bear. Right now is a really good time for us to feel that touch and hear that call and see that rebirth happening in our midst. Right now we need Jesus. We may feel that we are in a funeral procession or we may feel comforted that we are following a holy man, but neither stance is enough for Jesus. Jesus needs us to be touched and healed and ready to bear witness. Jesus needs us to be the kind of crowd that can stay with him. Did you notice that about this crowd? They are unusually good. They don’t question Jesus or ask him by what authority he raises the young man. They don’t try to drive him off a cliff or ask him to keep quiet. They don’t question his pedigree or his logic or his timing. They are afraid but they let themselves be expanded by the power of God working among them. And then they come to life and they tell everybody what they’ve experienced.

Maybe you aren’t the prophet Elijah. But you are part of a crowd that has seen Jesus. You’ve seen him time and time again, haven’t you, raising someone to a life that never seemed possible? You’ve known hope in improbable moments, right? You’ve felt yourself moved by something joyful even on the darkest of days. You’ve kept coming back here in spite of suffering and in spite of yourself and in spite of all of us and our woeful inadequacies. You’ve been made into a disciple and given a call and a vision. And now Jesus needs you to tell all the surrounding country. You’ve had that experience of faith for them as well as for yourself, and now they—that world out there, that city, that country, that democracy—they need you to spread the word.

One final thought: we in the Episcopal Church have been asked to bear witness to gun violence this Sunday. We were asked to wear orange to show our solidarity with the victims of shootings in this city and throughout our nation. Our particular liturgical tradition doesn’t lend itself well to orange stoles or other shocking liturgical innovations, but please don’t think for a moment that this “ordinary” green isn’t a statement of compassion and profound solidarity. Gun violence, and our polarization as a country around gun violence, and our despair and our fear and our passivity, are sure signs that we are in need of conversion and new life and the touch of Jesus. Our call is clear, and our prophet is Christ himself. 

So let me say it again: Jesus needs you to tell all the surrounding country about the new life you’ve witnessed. That world out there, that city, that country, that democracy, that worrisome crowd: they need you to spread the word.

Preached by Mother Nora Johnson

5 June 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia